It’s officially summer and that means I’m craving fruit. Growing up in California meant I was fortunate enough to have delicious fruit year round, but living in NY, I’ve found that I really have to wait until summertime to get good fruit. This summer I am completely obsessed with fresh pineapple. I love everything about fresh pineapple except trying to cut it. I’ve seen Youtube vidoes and pictures on Pinterest about how to successfully cut a pineapple, but nothing seemed to work too well, so I decided to buy a pineapple slicer.

I ended up buying two pineapple slicers (yes, I’m that serious about my fresh pineapples). I bought the first one at T.J. Maxx because I had been eyeing pineapple slicers online and I was excited to find one for only $6. I got the second one from nomorerack.com.

The pineapple slicer from T.J. Maxx seemed surprisingly complicated at first. Of course the package came with a couple of pictures indicating how the pineapple slicer should be used, but of course I didn’t look at them, so it took a few minutes before I figured out that I had to cut the top and bottom of the pineapple off then cut the pineapple in half before I could actually get to work cutting it. Once I mastered the first step, I moved to the second one of pushing the slicer down through the pineapple. I quickly found a serious problem with this slicer – it just isn’t sharp enough to easily cut through a pineapple. I had to do a lot of work wiggling the slicer back and forth to get it to cut through the pineapple. And once I got to the bottom of the pineapple, it was hard to separate the pineapple from the slicer. All the pushing and wiggling created a juicy mess on my cutting board, but I was able to get a cored and peeled chunk of pineapple that was easy to cut.

When my second pineapple slicer arrived from nomorerack, I thought it wasn’t going to be much better than the first one. Nomorerack sells discount products that are often off brand and it can be a hit or miss. I assumed this pineapple slicer was going to be a miss. It looked cheap and unfinished. But I was presently surprised when I tried using it for the first time. Unlike the other slicer that involved a bit of pineapple pre-cutting, I only had to cut off the top of the pineapple to use this slicer. After cutting off the top, I just pushed the slicer down on the pineapple and twisted. The slicer went right through the pineapple without much pressure or effort. Once the slicer got to the bottom of the pineapple all I had to go was gently pull up on the handle and the pineapple came right out of the shell. The handle of the slicer comes apart, so the pineapple can easily slide off the slicer. This slicer was much more efficient than the first slicer and there was a lot less work and mess involved. It also leaves the shell in tact, which is great if you want to use it as a serving vessel at a party.

I’m going to keep both pineapple slicers, but I’ll definitely be using the second one more often.